Market Saturday

Atticus' Picnic Shorts

Paul and I spent the better part of the morning at the regional and county farmer's markets getting delicious, local food to cook for the week. I try to make this part of my weekly schedule both to support local agriculture and so that we can have as much choice as possible over where our food comes from - choosing the farm's practices that we most want to support. In fact, we have just signed up for a "Know Your Farm" program where we can order from local farms online each week and have our meat, produce, and dairy delivered nearby, in our neighborhood. 

Today we left the market with beef and bacon, shiitake mushrooms, lettuce, eggplant, peppers, peaches, potatoes, a bulb of heirloom garlic, a variety of onions, a loaf of bread, and an heirloom tomato given to us by a farmer who suggested we try one of her varieties first before having to buy! All this summer food makes me ready for a picnic! 

Atticus' Picnic-for-One Clutch

I love being able to talk to the people who actually grow the things we are eating. Several of the farmers even shared some delicious recipes for how to cook their mushrooms and peppers, and we have one of the suggestions on the menu for later in the week. 

At the county market (the oldest in Mecklenburg County), we stopped for some homemade soup made with fresh, local ingredients. Our choice for this week was curry squash. We were also pleasantly surprised to find a group of men and women circled together in old cane-bottom chairs, playing some folk tunes on their fiddles and banjos. What a pleasant Saturday morning! 

Atticus' Short-Sleeve Summer Sweater

I've included a few photos of some Atticus the Ant wear, perfect attire for summer picnics, Saturday bike rides, and backyard barbeques. All of the clothing is available for purchase on Etsy, with free shipping through July 31st!

Atticus' Dinner Skirt

Atticus' Shady Weather Cardigan

here's my card...

I haven't gotten a chance to sit down lately and do any blogging because I have been taking an entrepreneurship class and have had so much HOMEWORK! It has been 5 years since I've had to even think about homework. The class is really condensed into a fast-track program, so we're in class from 9-4, two days a week. But it has been really great and has given me a deepened perspective of everything I need to think about in making my hobby into a true business.

Something I have taken the time to work on is one version of my business cards. I have enjoyed brainstorming ways to create a card that really reinforces the ideas behind Verabelle, something that is not just a card but is a thoughtful, tactile object. For this batch, I started out by printing my logo and information onto colored paper. I included everything from my Etsy site to a blog link. Paul and I have been saving cereal, granola bar, and pasta boxes for awhile so that I could reuse them for tags or cards. I cut a few of these and pasted on the paper cards to give them a stiffer backing. (Eventually, I'll be able to just stamp the rest of these boxes with all of the information that goes on my card, instead of using the extra paper.) The last step was coloring in the tree with watercolor - the most fun step! I used a variety of colors and mixed a few together so that each card is slightly different. So far I've given out a lot of these, and people really take the time to look it over in more detail than usual, flipping it front to back and inspecting the watercolor. Everyone seems to like to cereal box idea! I think they're perfect - inexpensive, creative, and a way to reuse something that would have ended up in the trash!

I also took a little time last weekend to make a business card holder that would give people a little preview to what my designs are like. I used Blanche the Buffalo as my inspiration for the style and colors and finished it off by adding a replication of my painting. People seem to like the "pink, curly-headed buffalo!"

Does anyone have any other great business card ideas?

Field Trip / Fall Preview

Did you know.... Verabelle t-shirts are coming soon!

Heather and I just got back from American Apparel where we finalized the color selection for the first batch of Verabelle t-shirts! This was a fun little field trip. We grabbed up a slew of hues from the racks and Heather modeled back-to-back colors for each fall animal while I considered color combos from the laptop. Each of the fall animals (There are 5, introductions coming soon!) has one main color and one secondary color to be offered later. We're starting out with just regular cotton t-shirts but will expand to other styles soon. 

Considering colors for Mack the Mallard. What goes with his feathers the best?

As Verabelle intern, Heather often gets the job of model-for-a-day!

We're nearing the end of the prep phase for screen printing - getting the animals digitally fluffed and brushed to be in tip-top shape for their fall debut. I can't even begin to tell you all the snags we've hit along the way in moving from the handmade vintage line into the screen printing phase. Apparently what I am attempting hasn't quite been done before... Let's hope it works, then!

This is a very exciting time, though. T-shirts mean spreading the Verabelle name and message much further. I will be able to do things with the t-shirts that I would never be able to do with the vintage line (and visa versa). I feel that the vintage clothing and the screen printed shirts are a perfect compliment to one another. Where the vintage pieces have limited availability, take much more time to refashion by hand and require care as your own personal, wearable art-piece, the t-shirts will be readily available; they'll be easy for me to get to you, easy for your pocketbook and machine-washable! One is original, one-of-a-kind, and very special; the other is easy, breezy, every-day wear.

Start looking for the Mack the Mallard, Roscoe the Raccoon, Baird the Bluebird, Sonia the Squirrel, and yes, of course, Odetta the Owl in mid August!

The final fall line-up!